A. Field of Invention
This invention pertains to a system for producing certified documents electronically, and more particularly, to documents that have a security image with information that is not visible to the naked eye, thus providing a certification that the document is genuine. The method is also used to generate web pages with a similar security as a means of providing verification that the web pages are genuine. More particularly, a method and system is provided wherein a string of alphanumeric characters are converted into a security image from several security elements, each element corresponding to each of the characters of the string. The string may be defined by a customer and may be different for each document, or it may be a standard string that is used for a number of documents or web pages.
B. Description of the Prior Art
The security of documents has been a long time concern, particularly for governmental agencies and financial institutions. In order to provide assurance that a document is genuine, documents have been printed on special paper having special characteristics. For example, it is very common to provide official documents, including bank notes and financial instruments on paper that is embossed and/or imprinted with a fine design that is difficult to reproduce or copy. Moreover, some of the patterns imprinted on the paper are constructed and arranged to be almost invisible to the naked eye on an original document but produce a very clear mark when reproduced on a copier, thereby indicating that a corresponding document is not genuine but has been copied. Various techniques for generating these types of documents have been developed, for example, by Document Security Systems, Inc. of Rochester, N.Y.
However, these types of documents are created using specialized expensive printers to either create the whole document in one step, or to create the documents in two steps, first by imprinting or embossing blank pages with a security image or watermark, and second, by applying content to the pages. In either case, the process is slow and time consuming. Moreover the process is very expensive if it is used to produce a single, unique document that may be used, for example, for identification.